Farbauti was the giant who fathered Loki — a jötunn whose name means “cruel-striker” or “dangerous-hitter,” and who, in a striking interpretation, may represent the lightning that strikes the earth to kindle fire. As the father of the trickster, he stands at the giant-blooded root of one of the most important and dangerous beings in all of Norse myth.
The Cruel-Striker
Farbauti (Old Norse Fárbauti, “cruel striker,” “dangerous beater,” or “he who strikes dangerously”) was a giant (jötunn) of the giants' kindred. He is named in the old sources as the father of Loki, by the female being Laufey (also called Nál). Little is told of Farbauti himself beyond this parentage, but his very name — suggesting a violent, striking force — has invited a beautiful and influential interpretation.
The Lightning and the Leaf
Many scholars have read the parentage of Loki as a nature-myth about the birth of fire. Farbauti, the “cruel-striker,” is interpreted as the lightning — the dangerous, striking force from the sky. His consort Laufey, whose name may mean “leafy isle” or “full of leaves,” and her other name Nál, “needle” (as in pine-needles), is read as the dry foliage or the trees. And their child Loki — so closely associated with fire — is the flame that is born when lightning strikes the dry leaves and kindles a blaze. In this reading, the trickster-god's very birth encodes a natural truth: that fire is born when the striking force of the lightning meets the dry tinder of the forest. Farbauti is the lightning-bolt that fathers fire.
The Father of the Trickster
Whatever his deeper nature, Farbauti's significance lies in his fatherhood. Through him, Loki — the shape-shifting trickster who lived among the gods, helped and harmed them by turns, and finally engineered their doom — was of giant blood, a jötunn by birth even as he dwelt in Asgard as Odin's blood-brother. Loki's dual nature, his position between gods and giants, his role as both helper and destroyer, all flow in part from his giant parentage. Farbauti is the giant root of that ambiguity, the father whose striking nature was passed down to the most dangerous and fascinating of all the figures of Norse myth.
The Striking Force at the Root
Farbauti endures as the giant father of Loki and, in interpretation, as the lightning that kindles fire — a figure glimpsed only in his parentage but rich in meaning. He embodies the deep entanglement of gods and giants in Norse myth, the giant blood that ran in the trickster's veins, and the lovely possibility that the myths encode the secrets of nature: that in the family of Farbauti the lightning, Laufey the leaves, and Loki the flame, the Norse told the story of how fire is born.
The cruel-striker who fathered the trickster may be the lightning itself — striking the leafy Laufey to kindle their child, the flame that is Loki.